Greg Zanon gets contract buyout from Colorado Avalanche

A few days ago, Joe Sakic said the Avs wouldn’t buy anybody out. Well, on Thursday the Avs did buy a guy out.

But Sakic was talking about the compliance buyouts. The Avs have two of those they can use by next year to better comply with the lower cap if they want, and those buyouts don’t count against the team’s salary cap.

Today, the Avs did a standard buyout of Greg Zanon’s contract. They put him on unconditional waivers for the purpose of buying him out. Zanon had one year left on his deal, worth $2.25 million.

By doing a standard buyout, the Avs must give Zanon two-thirds of that remaining salary in a lump sum ($1.5 million). That $1.5 million counts against the Avs’ salary cap, but they can spread it out over two years.

That means Zanon will still cost the Avs a cap hit of $750,000 for this season and next. He becomes the first standard buyout by the Avs since D-man Tom Preissing a few years ago and third overall (Chris Gratton was the other).

So, for one season of work in Denver, Zanon and his beard received $3.75 million. He will not go down as one of Greg Sherman’s better signings.

What does this mean going forward? It means the Avs are almost certain to sign an unrestricted free agent defenseman Friday. Who will that be? Probably one of the guys listed in this story[1], but we shall see. This being the holiday, it’s been something of an issue getting people on the phone today.

The Avs obviously really wanted to open up a roster spot to fit in another D-man, and now they’ve done it.

Zanon’s tenure will be remembered for that beard, falling down a lot on the ice, blocking a fair number of shots and being on the ice for an awful lot of goals against.